Heaven (Heaven Trilogy Series #1)

by Angela Johnson

Overview

Original publication and copyright date: 1998.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442403420
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	01/05/2010
Series:	Angela Johnson's Heaven Trilogy Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	981,413
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	790L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Angela Johnson has won three Coretta Scott King Awards, one each for her novels The First Part Last, Heaven, and Toning the Sweep. The First Part Last was also the recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award. She is also the author of the novels Looking for Red and A Certain October. Her books for younger readers include the Coretta Scott King Honor Book When I Am Old with You, illustrated by David Soman; Wind Flyers and I Dream of Trains, both illustrated by Loren Long; and Lottie Paris Lives Here and its sequel Lottie Paris and the Best Place, both illustrated by Scott M. Fischer. Additional picture books include A Sweet Smell of Roses, Just Like Josh Gibson, The Day Ray Got Away, and All Different Now. In recognition of her outstanding talent, Angela was named a 2003 MacArthur Fellow. She lives in Kent, Ohio. Visit her at AJohnsonAuthor.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One: Heaven

In Heaven there are 1,637 steps from my house to the Western Union. You have to walk by a playground and four stores -- two clothing, one food, and one hardware coffee shop. After you pass those stores, you cross one street and hop over a deadly looking grate. (I once heard about a man who got struck by lightning while standing on one.) Ten steps past the grate is Ma's Superette.

(If you can't find it at Ma's...she even sells live bait on the side.)

Ma's Superette is open 23 1/2 hours a day. Ma closes it from 4:10 A.M. to 4:40 A.M. every morning. She uses the half hour to pray. At least that's what she says she uses it for. When I said differently one day Pops said I was skeptical and not spiritual at all.

That made me mad 'cause hadn't I put all my allowance in the Salvation Army kettle last winter? Sometimes Pops just doesn't get it. He even said a while ago that because I was just fourteen I didn't understand about life, but I wasn't about to hear that. Sometimes he gets so mad at me, he just shakes his head and mumbles that I'm just like Uncle Jack. Then he tosses the thought away I guess and smiles at me, every time.

Anyway, Ma's was the place you could get nachos and nail polish, Levi's when you needed them, and flip-flops for the summer. I'd already gone through two pair and it's only the middle of June.

Heaven might sound pretty boring to most people, but before I really understood about all my years at the Western Union, it was fine for a girl like me.

I don't get sent to Ma's for bread and milk like most kids, but to wire money. I've been doing it ever since I've been allowed to leave the yard by myself. It's something I thought most kids did. It's something I found out a little further down the road that made me different from every other kid in Heaven.

Copyright © 1998 by Angela Johnson

Reading Group Guide

1. Marley lives in the town of Heaven, Ohio. What is heavenly about the place? What isn't? What mood does the author establish by choosing Heaven as the name for Marley's hometown and as the title for this novel? Would you want to live in Heaven, Ohio? Why or why not?

2. Explore the character of Jack, the man Marley thought was her uncle. Why do you think he drifts around the country? Why does he always name his dogs "Boy"? What are his hopes? What are his fears?

3. Unlike Jack, Bobby is raising his child by himself. Do you think he made a more responsible decision than Jack? Why or why not?

4. Marley doesn't ask her friends about their past. "The past," she says, "doesn't always make sense of the present." What does she mean by that? Do you agree that it's true for all the characters in this novel? For example, does Jack's past help explain his present way of life?

5. This novel begins with the story of a dream, and many other dreams are described during its course. Discuss the importance of dreams in Heaven. What do they reveal about the dreamers? How do they shape the tone of this novel?

6. "Maybe the one big lie makes everything a lie," Marley says to Pops. Do you agree? If someone lies to you, can you ever believe him or her again? Are all lies bad? Should some be forgiven?

7. How does Marley's understanding of the Maple family change over time? Why do you think Shoogy dislikes her family so much? Why does she cut herself? What is behind Mrs. Maple's seemingly perfect facade?

8. Marley is furious at Momma and Pops for waiting until she was fourteen years old to tell her the truth about her birth. Is her anger justified? Should she have been told earlier? Whyor why not?

9. How do Momma and Pops respond to Marley's anger? Why do they give her the "Baby Mond" box? How does Butchy react to the news? What does he mean when he says to her, "We'll always be who we were to each other."

10. What makes a real family? Marley struggles with this question throughout the novel. Does she find an answer for herself? If so, what is it? What do you think makes a real family?

Introduction

About the book

What happens when you discover that you aren't who you always thought you were? In this lyrical novel, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, fourteen-year-old Marley lives in a small Ohio town called Heaven. For Marley, it is nearly a paradise. She has parents who love her, friends who support her, and even a mysterious uncle who sends her the most wonderful notes. But her life is upended one day when a letter arrives from a little church in Alabama. Suddenly, in Marley's eyes anyway, Momma and Pops are liars, wandering Uncle Jack is a greater mystery than ever, and Marley is desperate to make sense of what it means to be a family. Sparely written and achingly felt, this richly acclaimed novel, as Booklist observes, "Makes us see the power of loving kindness."

Discussion Questions

• Marley lives in the town of Heaven, Ohio. What is heavenly about the place? What isn't? What mood does the author establish by choosing Heaven as the name for Marley's hometown and as the title for this novel? Would you want to live in Heaven, Ohio? Why or why not?

• Explore the character of Jack, the man Marley thought was her uncle. Why do you think he drifts around the country? Why does he always name his dogs "Boy"? What are his hopes? What are his fears?

• Unlike Jack, Bobby is raising his child by himself. Do you think he made a more responsible decision than Jack? Why or why not?

• Marley doesn't ask her friends about their past. "The past," she says, "doesn't always make sense of the present." What does she mean by that? Do you agree that it's true for all the characters in this novel? For example, does Jack's past help explainhis present way of life?

• This novel begins with the story of a dream, and many other dreams are described during its course. Discuss the importance of dreams in Heaven. What do they reveal about the dreamers? How do they shape the tone of this novel?

• "Maybe the one big lie makes everything a lie," Marley says to Pops. Do you agree? If someone lies to you, can you ever believe him or her again? Are all lies bad? Should some be forgiven?

• How does Marley's understanding of the Maple family change over time? Why do you think Shoogy dislikes her family so much? Why does she cut herself? What is behind Mrs. Maple's seemingly perfect facade?

• Marley is furious at Momma and Pops for waiting until she was fourteen years old to tell her the truth about her birth. Is her anger justified? Should she have been told earlier? Why or why not?

• How do Momma and Pops respond to Marley's anger? Why do they give her the "Baby Mond" box? How does Butchy react to the news? What does he mean when he says to her, "We'll always be who we were to each other."

• What makes a real family? Marley struggles with this question throughout the novel. Does she find an answer for herself? If so, what is it? What do you think makes a real family?

Activities and Projects

• Inspired by Jack's poetic notes to Marley, write a letter to a far-off relative. Describe yourself, your home, and your friends. Tell him or her about important books in your life. Share your plans for the future.

• Heaven is set in the summer of 1996, when a large number of black churches in the South were burned down. These tragedies remind Momma and Pops of the early 1960s. Why? Research this critical period in the civil rights movement. Why were black churches at risk back then? Who was attacking them?

• "It's like that six degrees of separation thing," Marley thinks, when an intriguing letter from Alabama arrives just after she sees news reports of church burnings in the state, "everybody is closer than they think to everybody else." Play your own game of "six degrees of separation." Build a chain of personal connections that link you to notable people or distant places.

• Marley was named in honor of the late Jamaican singer Bob Marley. Listen to recordings of his music. Read about his life and learn about his lasting influence. Why do you think Marley is pleased to share his name?

About the author

Angela Johnson lives in Kent, Ohio. She is the author of many acclaimed picture books, novels, and poetry collections, among them Toning the Sweep, winner of the 1994 Coretta Scott King Award, and When I Am Old with You and The Other Side: Shorter Poems, both Coretta Scott King Honor Books.

Angela Johnson is the author of the Coretta Scott King Honor picture book When I Am Old with You; as well as A Sweet Smell of Roses, illustrated by Eric Velasquez; Just Like Josh Gibson, illustrated by Beth Peck; and I Dream of Trains, which was also illustrated by Loren Long. She has won three Coretta Scott King Awards, one each for her novels Heaven, Toning the Sweep, and The First Part Last. In recognition of her outstanding talent, Angela was named a 2003 MacArthur Fellow. She lives in Kent, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

As in her Gone from Home, Johnson here explores the themes of what makes a place home and which people family. Fourteen-year-old Marley's tranquil life in Heaven, Ohio, turns hellish the day her family receives a letter from Alabama. The note (from the pastor of a church that was destroyed by arson) requests a replacement for Marley's baptismal record, and reveals that "Momma" and "Pops" are really Marley's aunt and uncle, and mysterious Jack (an alleged "uncle" with whom Marley has corresponded but doesn't remember) is her true father. In this montage of Marley's changing perceptions, Johnson presents fragments of the whole picture a little at a time: images of people, places (the Western Union building "1637" steps away from Marley's house) and artifacts (a box filled with love letters between her birth parents) gain significance as Marley begins to make sense of the past and integrate her perceptions into her new identity. The author's poetic metaphors describe a child grasping desperately for a hold on her reality ("It was one of those nights that started to go down before the sun did," she says of the evening the fateful letter arrives). The melding of flashbacks and present-day story line may be confusing initially, but readers who follow Marley's winding path toward revelation will be well rewarded.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

What makes a person who she is? Is it her name, the people she lives with, or is blood the only link to identity? Marley, 14, suddenly plunges head first into these complex questions when she discovers that the people she's been living with her entire life aren't her real parents. Butchy is not her real brother, and her mysterious Uncle Jack, who has been writing her short but beautiful letters for as long as she can remember, turns out to be her real, very absent father. In spare, often poetic prose reminiscent of Patricia MacLachlan's work, Johnson relates Marley's insightful quest into what makes a family. Her extreme anger with her supposed parents, who turn out to be her aunt and uncle, for not telling her the truth, for not being the perfect family that she'd always thought them to be, wars with her knowledge that not even her friend Shoogy Maple's model family is as perfect and beautiful as it seems. The various examples of "family" Marley encounters make her question what's real, what's true, what makes sense, and if any of that really matters as much as the love she continues to feel for her parents in spite of their seeming betrayal. Johnson exhibits admirable stylistic control over Marley's struggle to understand a concept that is often impossible to understand or even to define. -- Linda Bindner, formerly at Athens Clarke County Library, Georgia

School Library Journal

After spending most of her life in bucolic Heaven, Ohio, a teenager finds her certainties come tumbling down. Marley Carroll likes her family, has two steady friends, and a wandering uncle, Jack, who sends her poetic letters describing his travels and asking about her thoughts and dreams. Her peace is shattered by the arrival of a different sort of letter, addressed to "Monna Floyd," from an Alabama deacon trying to reconstruct a burnt church's records; the people she calls Momma and Pops apologetically explain that they are actually her aunt and uncle, that Jack is her father, and that her mother died in an auto accident when she was very young. Devastated, cast adrift, Marley searches for her parents in a small box of mementos, and in early memories, meanwhile struggling, in light of her new knowledge, to redefine her other relationships. Ultimately, in her friends' situations as in her own, Marley finds clear evidence that love, more than blood, makes a family. Johnson (see review, above) uses the present tense to give her ruminative, sparely told story a sense of immediacy, creates a varied, likeable supporting cast and, without explicitly addressing every loose end, communicates a clear sense that Marley—and Jack, still working through his grief—are going to be all right.

Kirkus Reviews

What brings happiness to 14-year-old Marley, living in the town of Heaven? Summer unfolds with a job babysitting for Feather, trips to Ma’s Superette for flip-flops, and a developing friendship with the perplexing Shoogy. Postcards arrive regularly from Uncle Jack and his dog, Boy. But Marley’s world suddenly explodes and realigns when a letter arrives in the mail. In her Coretta Scott King award-winning book, Angela Johnson presents the poignant struggles of Marley as she comes to grips with the relationships in her life. Narrator Andrea Johnson treats the listener to all the emotions of a young adult--enthusiasm, dejection, tenderness, perplexity, and the craving for what might have been. Johnson’s intensity leads both the listener and Marley to an understanding of what makes a family. A.R. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

DEC/JAN 01 - AudioFile